pictures

We've been waiting for weeks for Instagram to come to Android, and it looks like today's the day - it's available now in the Play Store. The hit iOS app offers a way to "breathe new info into your mobile photos" using filters and easy sharing. It's like a social network designed specifically for people who like to take photos.

Features:

100% free custom designed filters and borders

Lux works its magic by making your photos more vibrant and brings out details in your photos you couldn't see before

Nowadays, it's not often that we come across some blurrycam shots of a device and don't know what it is, but that's exactly the case here. Luckily, the shots do reveal some information, and there a few other things we can surmise from there.

Assuming they make it into the final product (this is, after all, a prototype), here's what we're looking at for organs:

1.2GHz dual-core CPU

1GB RAM

8MP camera on the back, VGA front-facing camera

WiFi (presumably up to 802.11n) and Bluetooth

Android 4.0.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

HTC's Sense 4.0

LTE

All in all, nothing really impressive, but a respectable showing for a mid-range smartphone.

A few weeks ago, we highlighted a neat accessory for your cell's camera called the Easy-Macro Lens Band. After reading our coverage of the item, the creator of it hit me up on Twitter to say thanks, and then sent me a few samples. I absolutely love macro photos, so I've spent the last several weeks playing with this little band and wanted to share my feelings.

What Is It?

For those unaware, the Easy-Macro band is an extremely simple solution for taking macro photos.

Adding an entry to the long list of novelty photo apps in the Android Market, SilkenMermaid has introduced TurboCollage - an aptly named app that allows users to make "picture pile" collages in just a few moments, with a surprising amount of control options.

Once you selects images to be included in the collage, the photos can be rotated, resized, scaled, and layered, to create a collage that perfectly matches your vision.

Late yesterday, we got a chance to spend some time with the Motorola DROID 4 over at the Verizon booth here at CES, and we have to say - It sure seems like Motorola has done it again. The DROID 4 will likely once again set the bar for QWERTY slider phones, and thanks to the addition of 4G LTE and a snappy TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor (the same one found in the DROID RAZR), it's also going to be the fastest DROID yet.

We stopped by the Sony booth earlier this morning at CES, and got some hands-on time with the very first Sony smartphones (Sony-Ericsson is no more, subject to regulatory approval) - the Xperia Ion and the Xperia S. While these devices were designed before the Sony Ericsson breakup, they'll be marketed as Sony devices when they hit retail channels.

Budget phone. The very sound of those two words, together, makes me slightly ill. In fact, it makes me almost immediately seethe with a sort of "nerd-rage." I hate the way budget phones are peddled onto the tech-illiterate by commission-motivated hucksters at "Big Four" carrier phone stores. I hate seeing people get locked into 2-year contracts because they got a "great deal" on a smartphone. "It was free!" they'll say, and that the nice sales representative (his name was Jimmy) kept them from buying "something they didn't need," because they walked in with a firm spending limit and they weren't going to budge!

The Toshiba Thrive and I don't exactly have a great history. And that's probably putting it mildly. In fact, in my first review of Toshiba's first Tegra 2 tablet (yes, I had to write a second one) earlier this year, I panned it so hard that I basically just started textually abusing the poor thing. So, at the behest of commenters and colleagues, I rewrote it. My revised review (here) was a little less harsh, but I'll be the first to admit: I didn't like the Thrive, and after spending even more time with it after the review, my feelings were unchanged.

The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is the best Android tablet I have ever used - hands down. No contest, nothing else comes even close. I've used the Tab 10.1, the Toshiba Thrive, the Motorola XOOM, the ASUS Transformer, the HTC Flyer, the Acer Iconia A500, and the original Galaxy Tab. The Tab 10.1 is probably the next best thing (with TouchWiz UX), but it seems downright slow next to the Tab 7.0 Plus at times.

Since an anonymous NenaMark revealed the HTC Vigor's alleged specs, the Android community has been waiting to hear more about the powerhouse supposedly heading for Verizon. Yesterday, some new info about the Vigor came in the form of blurrycam photos posted by the folks over at Droid-Life.

For those who may have forgotten, here are the Vigor's rumored specs:

1280x720 display

Qualcomm Adreno GPU

1.5GHz processor

Android 2.3.4

4G LTE Capability

No doubt the Vigor is looking like a powerful and sleek device, one which we're eagerly waiting to learn more about.